The Divine Invasion Part 20

"I'll serve you some very good California wine. A Mondavi red. I want you to like California wines; that French burgundy we had in New York was very nice, but-we have excellent wines out here."

"Is there a particular place you want to have dinner?"

"Sachiko's," Linda said. "j.a.panese food."

"You've got yourself a deal," he said.

"Is my sound system coming along okay?" she asked.

"Doing fine," he said.

"I don't want you to work too hard," Linda Fox said. "I have a feeling you work too hard. I want you to relax and enjoy life. There's so much to enjoy: good wine, friends."

Herb said, "Laphroaig Scotch."

In amazement, Linda Fox exclaimed, "Don't tell me you know about Laphroaig Scotch? I thought I was the only person in the world who drinks Laphroaig!"

"It's been made in the traditional copper stills for over two hundred and fifty years," Herb Asher said. "It requires two distillations and the skill of an expert stiliman."

"Yes; that's what it says on the package." She began to laugh. "You got that off the package, Herb."

"Yeah," he said.

"Isn't my Manhattan apartment going to be great?" she said enthusiastically. "That sound system you're putting in is what will make it. Herb-" She scrutinized him. "Do you honestly believe my music is good?"

"Yes," he said. "I know. What I say is true."

"You are so sweet," she said. "You see so much ahead for me. It's like you're my good luck person. You know, Herb, no one has ever really had confidence in me. I never did well in school . . . my family didn't think I could make it as a singer. I had skin trouble, too; really bad. Of course I actually haven't made it yet-I'm just beginning. And yet to you I'm-" She gestured.

"Someone important," he said.

"And that means so much to me. I need it so bad. Herb, I have such a low opinion of myself; I'm so sure I'm going to fail. Or I used to be so sure," she corrected herself. "But you give me- Well, when I see myself through your eyes I don't see a struggling new artist; I see something that . . ." She tried to go on; her lashes fluttered and she smiled at him apprehensively but hopefully, wanting him to finish for her.

"I know about you," he said, "as no one else does." And, indeed, that was true; because he remembered her, and no one else did. The world, collectively, had forgotten; it had fallen asleep. It would have to be reminded. And it would be.

"Come on out to the West Coast, Herb," Linda said. "Please. We'll have a lot of fun. Do you know California very well? You don't, do you?"

"I don't," he admitted. "I flew out to catch you at the Golden Hind. And I always dreamed of living in California. But I never did."

"I'll take you all around. It'll be terrific. And you can cheer me up when I'm depressed and rea.s.sure me when I'm scared. OK?"

"OK," he said, and felt, for her, great love.

"When you get out here, tell me what I do right in my music and what I'm doing wrong. But tell me most of all that I'm going to make it. Tell me I'm not going to fail, like I think I am. Tell me that the Dowland is a good idea. Dowland's lute music is so beautiful, the most beautiful music ever written. You really be- lieve, then, you're sure that my music, the kind of things I sing will take me to the top?"

"I'm positive," he said.

"How do you know these things? It's as if you have a gift. A gift that you in turn give to me.

"It is from G.o.d," Herb Asher said. "My present to you. My confidence in you. Accept what I say; it is true."

Gravely, she said, "I sense magic around us, Herb. A magic spell. I know that sounds silly, but I do. A beauty to everything." "A beauty," he said, "that I find in you." "In my music?" "In you both." "You're not making this up?"

"No," he said. "I swear by G.o.d's own name. By the Father that created us."

"From G.o.d," she echoed. "Herb, it scares me. You scare me. There is something about you."

Herb Asher said, "Your music will take you all the way." He knew because he remembered. He knew because, for him, it had already happened.

"Really?" Linda said.

"Yes," he said. "It will carry you to the stars."

CHAPTER 18.

The small animal, released from its cage, crept into Emmanuel's arms. He and Zina held it and it thanked them. Both of them felt its grat.i.tude.

"It's a little goat," Zina said, examining its hooves. "A kid."

"How kind of you," the kid said to them. "I have waited a long time to be released from my cage, the cage you put me in. Zina Pallas."

"You know me?" she said, surprised.

"Yes, I know you," the kid said, as it pressed itself against her. "I know both of you, although you two are really one. You have reunited your sundered selves, but the battle is not over; the battle begins now."

Emmanuel said, "I know this creature."

The little goat, in Zina's arms, said, "I am Belial. Whom you imprisoned. And whom you now release."

"Belial," Emmanuel said, "My adversary."

"Welcome to my world," Belial said.

"It is my world," Zina said.

"Not anymore. The goat's voice gained strength and author- ity. "In your rush to free the prisoners you have freed the great- est prisoner of all. I will contend against you, deity of light. I will take you down into the caves where there is no light. Nothing of your radiance will shine, now; the light has gone out, or soon will. Your game up to now has been a mock game in which you played against your own self. How could the deity of light lose when both sides were portions of him? Now you face a true adversary, you who drew order out of chaos and now draw me out of that order. I will test the powers that you have. Already you have made a mistake; you freed me without knowing who I am. I had to tell you. Your knowledge is not perfect; you can be surprised. Have I not surprised you?"

Zina and Emmanuel were silent.

"You made me helpless," Belial said, "placed in a cage, and then you felt sorry for me. You are sentimental, deity of light. It will be your downfall. I accuse you of weakness, the inability to be strong. I am he who accuses and I accuse my own creator. To rule you must be strong. It is the strong who rule; they rule the weak. You have, instead, protected the weak; you have offered help to me, your enemy. Let us see if that was wise."

"The strong should protect the weak," Zina said. "The Torah says so. It is a basic idea of the Torah; it is basic to G.o.d's law. As G.o.d protects man, so man should protect the disadvantaged, even down to animals and the n.o.bler trees."

Belial said, "This runs contrary to the nature of life, the nature you implanted in it. This is how life evolves. I accuse you of violating your own biological foundations, the order of the world. Yes, by all means, free every prisoner; loose a tide of murder- ers on the world. You have begun with me. Again I thank you. But now I leave you; I have as much to do as you have- perhaps more. Let me down." The goat leaped from their arms and ran off; Zina and Emmanuel watched it go. And as it ran it grew.

"It will undo our world," Zina said. Emmanuel said, "We will kill it first." He raised his hand; the goat vanished.

"It is not gone," Zina said. "It has concealed itself in the world. Camouflaged itself. We cannot now even find it. You know that it won't die. Like us it is eternal."

In the other cages the remaining imprisoned animals clamored to be released. Zina and Emmanuel ignored them; instead, they looked this way and that for the goat whom they had let out-let out to do as it wished.

"I sense its presence," Zina said.

"I, too," Emmanuel said somberly. "Our work is undone already."

"But the battle is not over," Zina said. "As it said itself, 'The battle now begins.'

"So be it," Emmanuel said. "We will fight it together, the two of us. As we did in the beginning, before the fall."

Leaning toward him, Zina kissed him. He felt her fear. Her intense dread. And that dread lay within him, too. What will become of them now? he asked himself. The people whom he wished to free. What kind of prison will Belial contrive for them with his endless ability to contrive prisons? Subtle ones and gross ones, prisons within prisons; prisons for the body, and, worse by far, prisons for the mind. The Cave of Treasures under the Garden: dark and small, without air and without light, without real time and real s.p.a.ce- walls that shrink and, caught tight, minds that shrink. And we have allowed this, Zina and I; we have colluded with the goat- thing to bring this about. Its release is their constraint, he realized. A paradox; we have given freedom to the builder of dungeons. In our desire to eman- c.i.p.ate we have crushed the souls of all the living. It will affect every one of them in this world, from the highest to the lowest. Until we can return the goat-thing to its box; until we can place it back within its container. And now it is everywhere; it is not contained. The atoms of the air are now its abode; it is inhaled like vapor. And each creature, breathing it in, will die. Not completely and not physically, but nonetheless death will come. We have released death, the death of the spirit. For all that now lives and wishes to live. This is our gift to them, done out of kindness.

"Motive does not count," Zina said, aware of his thoughts. Emmanuel said, "The road to h.e.l.l." Literally, he thought. in this case. That is the only door we have opened: the door to the tomb. I pity the small creatures the most, he thought. Those who have done the least harm. They above all do not deserve this. The goat-thing will single them out for the greatest suffering; it will afflict them in proportion to their innocence . . . this is its method by which the great balance is tilted from rect.i.tude, and the Plan undone. It will accuse the weak and destroy the helpless; it will use its power against those least able to defend themselves. And, most of all, it will devour the little hopes, the meager dreams of the small. Here we must intervene, he said to himself. To protect the small. This is our first task and the first line of our defense. Lifting off from his abode in Washington, D.C., Herb Asher joyfully began the flight to California and Linda Fox. This is going to be the happiest period of my life, he said to himself. He had his suitcases in the back seat and they were filled with everything that he might need; he would not be returning to Washington, D.C. and Rybys for some time-if ever. A new life, he thought as he guided his car through the vividly marked transcontinental traffic lanes. It's like a dream, he thought. A dream fulfilled. He realized, suddenly, that soupy string music filled his car. Shocked, he ceased thinking and listened. South Pacific, he real- ized. The song "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair." Eight hundred and nine strings, and not even divided strings. Was his car stereo on? He glanced at its indicator light and dial. No, it was not. I am in cryonic suspension! he thought. It's that huge FM transmitter next door. Fifty thousand watts of audio drizzle messing up everyone at Cry-Labs, Incorporated. Son of a b.i.t.c.h! He slowed his car, stunned and afraid. I don't get it, he thought in panic. I remember being released from suspension; I was ten years frozen and then they found the organs for me and brought me back to life. Didn't they? Or was that a cryonic fan- tasy of my dead mind? Which this is, too . . . oh, my G.o.d. No wonder it has seemed like a dream; it is a dream. The Fox, he thought, is a dream. Mv dream. I invented her as I lay in suspension; I am inventing her now. And my only clue is this dull music seeping in everywhere. Without the music I would never have known. It is diabolic, he thought, to play such games with a human being, with his hopes. With his expectations. A red light on his dashboard lit up, and simultaneously a bleep-bleep-bleep sounded. He had, in addition to everything else, become the target of a cop car. The cop car came up beside him and grappled onto his car. Their mutual doors slid back and the cop confronted him. "Hand me your license," the cop said. His face, behind its plastic mask, could not be seen; he looked like some kind of World War I fortification, something that had been built at Verdun.

"Here it is." Herb Asher pa.s.sed his license to the cop as their two cars, now joined, moved slowly forward as one.

"Are there any warrants out on you, Mr. Asher?" the cop said as he punched information into his console.

"No," Herb Asher said.

"You're mistaken." Lines of illuminated letters appeared on the cop's display. "According to our records, you're here on Earth illegally. Did you know that?"

"It's not true," he said.

"This is an old warrant. They've been trying to find you for some time. I am going to take you into custody."

Herb Asher said, "You can't. I'm in cryonic suspension. Watch and I'll put my hand through you." He reached out and touched the cop. His hand met solid armored flesh. "That's strange," Herb Asher said. He pressed harder, and then realized, all at once, that the cop held a gun pointed at him.

"You want to bet?" the cop said. "About the cryonic suspen- sion?"

"No," Herb Asher said.

"Because if you fool around anymore I will kill you. You are a wanted felon. I can kill you any time I wish. Take your hand off me. Get it away. Herb Asher withdrew his hand. And yet he could still hear South PacWc. The soupy sound still oozed at him from every side.

"If you could put your hand through me," the cop said, "you'd fall through the floor of your car. Think the logic through. It isn't a question of my being real; it's a question of everything being real. For you, I mean. It's your problem. Or you think it's your problem. Were you in cryonic suspension at one time?"

"Yes."

"You're having a flashback. It's common. Under pressure your brain abreacts. Cryonic suspension provides a womblike sense of security that your brain tapes and later on retrieves. Is this the first time it's happened to you, this flashback? I've come across people who've been in cryonic suspension who never could be convinced by any evidence, by what anyone said or whatsoever happened, that they were finally out of it."

"You're talking to one of them now," Herb Asher said.

"Why do you think you're in cryonic suspension?"

"The soupy music."

"I don't-"

"Of course you don't. That's the point."

"You're hallucinating."

"Right." Herb Asher nodded. "That's my point." He reached out for the cop's gun. "Go ahead and shoot," he said. "It won't hurt me. The beam will go right through me. "I think you belong in a mental hospital, not a jail."

"Maybe so."

The cop said, "Where were you going?"

"To California. To visit the Fox."

"As in the Fox and the Cat?"

"The greatest living singer."

"I never heard of him."

"Her," Herb Asher said. "She's not well known in this world. In this world she's just beginning her career. I'm going to help make her famous throughout the galaxy. I promised her."

"What's the other world compared to this?"

"The real world," Herb Asher said. "G.o.d caused me to re- member it. I'm one of the few people who remembers it. He appeared to me in the bamboo bushes and there were words in red fire telling me the truth and restoring my memories."

"You are a very sick man. You think you're in cryonic sus- pension and you remember another universe. I wonder what would have happened to you if I hadn't grappled onto you.

"I'd have had a good time," Herb Asher said, "out on the West Coast. A h.e.l.l of a lot better time than I'm having now."

"What else did G.o.d tell you?"

"Different things."

"G.o.d talks to you frequently?"

"Rarely. I'm his legal father."

The cop stared at him. "What?"

"I'm G.o.d's legal father. Not his actual father; just his legal father. My wife is his mother."

The cop continued to stare at him. The laser pistol wavered.

"G.o.d caused me to marry his mother so that-"